Hammer Films' Post-War BBC Crime Series and Serial Adaptations
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Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies Issue 18 October 2010 An Aristocratic Plod, Erstwhile Commandos and Ladies who Craved Excitement: Hammer Films' Post-War BBC Crime Series and Serial Adaptations David Mann, Independent Scholar Hammer Films' post-war production was reinvigorated thanks to a package of adaptations of largely forgotten BBC radio crime serials and series (1949-1951) that have so far escaped sustained critical attention. Yet these properties were regarded by the film industry as "gilt edged title booking for the majority of halls", their "exploitation angles […] unbounded" (Review of Dick Barton - Special Agent, Kinematograph Weekly, 1948: 16). Furthermore, in reflecting a period of profound social change, there can be no doubt that the original radio programmes are of social and cultural significance. Few recordings or scripts remain of the radio programmes, however, and so Hammer adaptations appear to proffer the last, best hope of retrieving their concerns and ideological posture. This article begins by examining the industrial and cultural context of the BBC programmes as well as their formal evolution and perceived potential for copyright exploitation. Hammer's own post-war evolution – its business acumen as a producer of films aimed primarily at the bottom end of the double bill – and its industrial strategies are then scrutinised. Finally, I analyse and account for the ideological, thematic and formal modifications that emerged as a result of the process of adaptation. BBC Crime Programmes The Second World War had brought a belated, grudging acceptance of the crime genre by the BBC. Before that time, the Corporation had rarely engaged with the genre. When it did, its contributions declined to engage with social and psychological issues, preferring instead to stay with purely ratiocinative concerns, as exhibited in the crime puzzle serial The Mayfair Mystery (1925). This was not entirely the BBC's fault. An early broadcast of Patrick Hamilton's play Rope (also 1925), a dark study of psychopathic narcissism, was subject to sustained, negative criticism. The Corporation was accused of pandering to "a section of the public which enjoys the degenerate" (Black, 1972: 166) and there were protests from the wider establishment. Even after the war, the BBC's crime content continued to endure criticism both for its moral decadence and its artistic mediocrity and the Corporation was constantly reminded of its obligation "to be a means of raising public taste" (Drakakis, 1981: 13). 1 Mann However, such proselytising disguised deeper ideological disquiet within the BBC itself. In the thirties, it feared the commercialisation, or in the parlance of the period, the "Americanisation" of European radio. Crime thrillers incorporating innovative, American-influenced formats infused with a democratic and modernising sensibility were in the vanguard of the perceived threat; they were programme staples of the European–based International Broadcasting Company (IBC), which openly competed for the domestic market (they broadcast in English) from 1934 until the outbreak of war. In 1939, 53 per cent of British listeners were adjudged to be regularly tuning in to these foreign stations (Poll for the British Institute of Public Opinion cited in Drakakis: 62). For its part, the BBC broadcast only "suitable" American programmes, stripped of their advertising component, whilst simultaneously (and perhaps ironically) citing "interference with reception" as the key factor behind its conservative, discriminatory policy (Camporesi, 1990: 86). During the war, though European competition was silenced, the Americans set up on their own American Forces Network. The BBC's paranoia about what it imagined to be the imminent American takeover of the European broadcasting market intensified. The BBC's senior management sought to particularise its output by stressing its divergence from American endeavours. Imported American shows were subject to quota restrictions as early as 1944 (Camporesi: 168). Basil Nicholls, the BBC Senior Controller, issued a series of directives implicitly promoting "the effective resistance to the Americanisation of our Entertainment" (Camporesi: 173). However, despite these ideological misgivings, the pressure of the competition forced the BBC to engage more fully with such an obviously popular form, especially as the ideology of the People's War had forced the Corporation, as with other public institutions, to become more egalitarian. The success of the wartime Forces Programme (initially produced with the American forces prior to the inception of AFN) with its emphasis on light entertainment eventually led to the introduction of the Light Programme in July 1945 with a remit to provide entertaining popular genres. Consequently, senior BBC executives undertook annual excursions to the major American cities to reconnoitre and, on their return, produce "Anglicised" items of interest (Drakakis, 1981: 11). By the end of the war, it was possible to determine two distinct strands in the BBC's burgeoning crime fiction output. On the one hand, building upon the tradition of The Mayfair Mystery and its ilk, there were the conventional cases of fictional Yard officers that were presented as crime conundrums and exhibited little considered engagement with changed social conditions. Examples include Inspector Hornleigh Investigates (first broadcast in 1937, it spawned a crop of amusing films starring Gordon Harker and Alastair Sim); Crime Magazine's "Barton of the Yard" (1940); the eponymous hero of Chief Inspector French's Cases (1943); and Inspectors Cobbe and Duncan (1945). 2 Issue 18, October 2010 Hammer Films’ Post-War BBC Crime Series and Serial Adaptations On the other hand, there were a number of more diverse, American-influenced crime programmes. The career of the American writer John Dickson Carr illustrates the incestuous relationship between the British and American narrative traditions at this time. With the outbreak of hostilities, Carr was initially forbidden by the American government to continue writing for the BBC. He returned to America and created a new series called Suspense (1942-1962). When America entered the war, he came back to Britain and created the extremely successful series Appointment with Fear (intermittently 1943-1955), which incorporated adaptations of many of the Suspense plays as well as its distinctive narrator "The Man in Black" (who acquired his own series in 1949). In turn many of the scripts for Appointment with Fear were recycled in America as part of the Cabin-13 (1948) radio series (Nevins Jr., 1978: 335). BBC Radio Crime Series and Serials: Themes and Subject Matter Many of these American-influenced programmes represented a variety of gender and class relationships that would have been impossible for the BBC to characterise before the war. The BBC's belated engagement, in quite carefully circumscribed ways, with such concerns and with the changed social conditions that now prevailed, is well illustrated by The Adventures of PC 49 (1947-1953). Several series adopted the "sleuthing couple" format that was indebted to American models such as The Thin Man (in one incarnation, a successful radioseries that ran between 1941 and 1950). Once of the most successful BBC crimes series – at its height attracting an audience of twelve million – The Adventures of PC 49 exemplifies the profound shifts in ideological stance – both conservative and innovative – that accompanied the process of the adaptation of the format. The hero, ex-Varsity the Honourable Archibald Berkeley Willoughby, PC 49, is in the long line of aristocratic gentlemen sleuths in English popular fiction, but the comic updating is to make him a rookie constable, newly emerged from training at Hendon, whose privileged background is at odds with the working-class surroundings he now patrols. Topically, but also in the tradition of British crime fiction, it is Willoughby's inability to cope with the mundane reality of "Civvy Street" that provides his incentive. The inept Willoughby's ambition is to become a detective, a "plainclothesman." However his enthusiasm is jeopardised by an unbridled propensity for misguided hunches and a tendency to be duped by glamorous females; the realisation of his own inadequacy invariably acts as a cue for his catchphrase, "Oh, my Sunday helmet." Unlike other adult-orientated crime programmes, the series was required to tone down sexual and violent content because it was repeated on the seven o'clock slot when children, keen fans of 49, would be listening. Typically, as a counter to 49's ineptitude, it is his resourceful girlfriend, Joan Carr, who gets results. However, the couple's marriage, in 1952, heralded a return to more traditional roles and the once plucky Joan became domesticated. Issue 18, October 2010 3 Mann This drove one listener, a stonemason's wife, to complain: "Mrs PC 49 acted too much the weeping, clinging female […] ask her to speak like a grown woman" (Listener Research, 1952: BBC Archive R19/16). Another sleuthing couple series, Dr Morelle was first broadcast in 1942 as part of the regular thriller slot Monday Night at Eight. It ran intermittently until 1948 and enjoyed a revival as late as 1957. The series centred upon the casebooks of an eminent criminal psychologist turned investigator and his intrepid secretary, the ironically dubbed Miss Frayle. Whilst the villains inevitably conduct themselves according to the behaviour patterns that the sedentary Morelle's